Devil in My Bed (26 page)

Instead, she raced to duck behind the wardrobe. She took the main cable in her hands and began to pull with all her might. The aged hemp rope felt prickly and brittle in her hands but seemed sturdy enough.

Its oily coating had likely protected it from the years of disuse. She pulled heartily and was rewarded by an answering creak rising up the deep, narrow, dark shaft. The rope shifted a few inches, turning the rusting pulleys. A fine reddish dust of rust fell upon her hands. Encouraged, she lowered her grip and pulled again.

This time the rope moved nearly a foot!

In the main club room, Aidan had managed to down half his brandy, but imbibing enough to dull the pain seemed like entirely too much effort.

Colin appeared in his field of vision. “Don’t scowl at me. Melody is napping. I’ll be back in my rooms in plenty of time.”

Aidan ignored him. Perhaps he could will the interfering bastard away.

No such luck. Colin took possession of the opposite chair with the exaggerated nonchalance of a person who knew he wasn’t wanted but didn’t care.

“You’re an ass.”

That was true enough, so it didn’t bear comment. “I take it back. You’re an incredible ass.”

Aidan looked up wearily. “That’s going a bit far, don’t you think?” He rubbed a hand over his burning eyes. “Then again, I did expose Melody to that woman without fully investigating her claims. I knew perfectly well she was . . .” He trailed off, unable to excavate a vile enough term from his exhausted brain.

Colin snorted. “Beautiful? Exceptional? Charming, if slightly dotty?”

Aidan scowled.

“Over you, that is.” Colin shook his head in wonderment. “See here, you idiot, I know you’re disappointed that Melody’s not yours, but she hasn’t gone anywhere. Jack will be back in a matter of days to clear this mess up. I hardly think he’ll mind Melody having a couple of besotted uncles hanging about.”

“You don’t understand,” Aidan said, his voice no more than a bitter whisper. “It isn’t what I’ve lost, it’s what I never had . . . never will have.”

Colin leaned forward to shake his index finger in Aidan’s face. “And that’s why you’re an incredible ass!

You’re mad for her and you’re not going to get over her this time any more than you did before. So help her divorce the bounder. And then you marry her, and no one would ever dare to mock Lady Blankenship to her face!”

“It’s hardly that simple.”

“The hell is isn’t. She’s the only woman you’ve ever looked at twice—certainly the only one you’ve ever mooned over—so you might as well accept that no one is perfect, forgive her for making a mistake and then get down on both knees so you can beg her forgiveness for being such an incredible ass!”

Aidan didn’t break that admonishing finger. Later he would be extremely proud of himself for such self-control. At the moment, however, he only glared all his fury at Colin for a long tense moment.

“She lied. Why is that so hard for you to comprehend?”

“Yes, she did lie. And for your part, you believed. In fact, you were downright eager to believe, weren’t you? Why do you think you were so keen, my friend? So breathlessly, enthusiastically eager to play dupe to her machinations?”

“Shut your bloody mouth.”

“Now that I think on it, for all your faults, you’ve never been especially gullible. I’d even go so far as to call you discerning, if I wasn’t too busy believing you to be a right idiot at the moment. So, why would a discerning fellow such as yourself fall prey to a designing female with no conscience?”

“They’re called breasts.”

“Other women have them. I don’t believe that Madeleine has cornered the market on that particular asset.”

Not like Madeleine’s breasts.

Which was idiocy, of course. There was nothing universally spectacular about any single part of Madeleine’s form. “The unique combination of assets, then.”

“Which she uses for nefarious ends, no doubt.”

“Too bloody right.”

“What are those ends, then? Did she clean out your pockets? Did she flaunt other men before you? Or is she operating on some larger scale? Is it Madeleine’s lifelong dream to rule the world? Is she Napoleon in lacy knickers? Or perhaps her goal is something more commonplace. Something like . . . survival?

Good God, what a monster. You’re well rid of her, I say.”

I could kill him in his sleep. I could cut the girth of his saddle. I could trap him in a room with Wilberforce and a spoon and see who comes out alive.

Not much sport there. Wilberforce knew his spoons, by gum.

Unable to bear more, Aidan slammed his brandy snifter down on the table, erupted from his chair, and flung himself from the club, out into the noisy, dirty streets that didn’t remind him of Madeleine at every turn.

Aidan stood in the cheerful parlor of the house he’d rented just the day before and stared unseeing at the hearth, which only lacked the cherry glow of lighted coals to complete the happy domestic picture.

Had it truly only been yesterday when he’d strode through these very rooms, eager to bring Melody and Madeline here?

It seemed a terrible cheat now, that hope, that simmering happiness that he’d finally, sheepishly, begun to allow himself, eager to begin his new life as a family man with his new wife and daughter.

But Melody was not his daughter and Madeline was nothing but a lie. She was a creature of no remorse.

To lie with her words, well, she was only human and who hadn’t lied in their lifetime, but to lie with her touch and her body and her smile? She was the devil, after all. He’d known it once. Yet mere days spent with her and he’d forgotten.

It was only that she’d seemed so different this time, especially last evening when she was telling him the truth—or rather, her current version of the “truth.” She’d twisted her knuckles to white, but she’d met his gaze evenly, without evasion or defiance.

The whole story was mad, of course. Fleeing her husband across the country, hiding out in London? One didn’t come to London to hide! One went to tiny, out-of-the-way hamlets with few people but farmers and sheep-herders and the like.

Where she would stand out like a flamingo among hens.

But London? The largest city in the world, full of people who might know her, full of people who might know her husband—

So full of widows in black that one scarcely saw them anymore.

Perhaps it was rather clever—he’d never accused Madeleine of stupidity—but it was all simply so unlikely! A drama, a bit of theatre enacted to gain sympathy or aid!

Aid which she didn’t ask for.

Nonsense. If she’d needed something, she’d have asked him.

When? When you were accusing her of adultery or when you scoffed at her tears?

He rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly not feeling quite as sure of himself. Madeleine had lied, had raised his hopes again only to dash them to the cobbles, had manipulated the heart of a child, had—

Had fled her own home to avoid that fellow, Critchley. He’d witnessed that himself. She’d gone to ground in a gentlemen’s club. What could convince a reasonable woman to do such a thing?

What indeed?

I married a monster.

In only a few strides, Aidan was through the door of his new house and heading swiftly down the street.

It wasn’t an ideal situation, to be sure. Wilhelm grimaced in frustration as he peered through the hole he’d bored through the heavy wooden door in the attic. He could scarcely see her.

Well, it wasn’t to be helped. He’d had to act quickly, after all. He simply would have preferred more time to prepare.

For instance, if he’d had the opportunity, he would have arranged the room so that no area was completely out of his sight. As it was now, large areas of the damned laundry attic were out of his view—a fact that Madeleine seemed to have figured it out.

He would have made more spy holes, but then again he could hardly be expected to pierce stone walls with only a day to prepare. As it was, it had been all he could do to seal the window with gum and drill through three inches of oak! The blankets he’d gathered from some of the empty but readied rooms in the club, just like the pitcher and chamber pot.

If he was going to make a habit of this activity, he was really going to have to put some thought into the details. Perhaps once he married the heiress, he could purchase his own little playhouse in town. A shudder of arousal went through him. Just think of it—rooms and rooms of enjoyment!

Then Madeleine appeared once more. Moving slowly, she made a weary circuit of the room. She seemed to be pacing her prison, but it looked as though she’d already given up on escape.

Poor fleeing lady. Nowhere to fly to now.

She looked half dead already. So listless and pale in her tired black gown, like fine alabaster but for the bruising on her temple and cheek.

She had never been so beautiful. Dying became her. How delicious.

Madeleine’s little row house stood dark and empty. The door was locked, but when Aidan dropped down the small flight of steps to the servant entry, he found that that door had been broken through.

Kicked in, he thought, as he examined the splinters in the doorframe where the lock had once nestled.

He moved into a kitchen just large enough for a cook and a maid to work, although he didn’t recall that Madeleine had ever had either. She must have done it all herself.

How many meals had she served him upstairs, simply cooked but savory? He’d eaten them thoughtlessly, more intent on their afterdinner entertainments. He doubted he’d ever complimented a single dish. Why would he, when the women of his world planned menus but never actually touched the food?

Feeling uncomfortable and increasingly urgent, he moved up the narrow back stair to the main floor.

Nothing seemed amiss in the hall or the entry, although he noticed that things had become much shabbier in the last three years. Still painfully clean, though. He pictured Madeleine in an apron and cap, scrubbing her own floors. In his mind she looked both pathetic and adorable. She ought never to have had to go it alone . . .

You ought never to walk alone.

The parlor was a shambles.

Old pain and new worry clutched at him. The shattered furnishings, the chill that told him no fire had warmed this house in days—

If she wasn’t here, where was she?

Fleeing the monster—the one you don’t believe in.

He did now.

The next morning, Aidan and Colin were hatching a plan of action over a quick bite of breakfast. Melody sat with them—or rather, stood on her chair with a giant napkin tied about her neck—chasing a bit of sausage around her oily plate with a stabbing fork, the tip of her little tongue stuck out of the corner of her mouth in concentration.

“I know you want to help look for Madeleine,” Aidan told Colin, “but we can’t leave Melody alone.”

“I know that,” Colin responded testily. “I simply hate sitting around—”

A knock on the door interrupted them. Melody looked up, eyes wide. Without a word, Colin scooped her up and went into the bedchamber, shutting the door.

Aidan cast quickly about the room, kicking a pair of tiny boots beneath the sofa and tossing a pillow over Gordy Ann, who looked much more like a doll after Madeleine’s stitchwork. Then he opened the door, expecting Wilberforce or Bailiwick.

Lord Aldrich stood before him. Aidan blinked in surprise. “Er, what can I—” Oops. “WHAT CAN I DO FOR

YOU, LORD ALDRICH?”

Aldrich drew back with a grimace. “You can stop shouting for one,” he said in a perfectly well-modulated tone. “I’m not actually deaf, you know.”

Aidan was confused. “You’re not?”

“No.” Aldrich had the grace to look slightly ashamed. “It’s simply that most people are so bloody boring, I can’t bear to listen. So I pretend I’m older and more decrepit than I am. It makes my life more peaceful.”

“Oh.” Then Aidan froze. Oh, hell. The building might be made of stone, but the doors were only wood.

Aldrich was a scant three rooms away. He’d taken no care to keep Melody quiet. Or, for that matter, Madeleine.

Aldrich was peering up at him with a small wrinkled smile. “Precisely, lad.”

Trying manfully to ignore the blush creeping over his face, Aidan stepped back. “I suppose you might as well come in, then.”

Aldrich toddled in, narrowly missing Aidan’s foot with his cane. “At first I was mightily annoyed at having my peaceful decline disturbed, but then I became interested despite myself. You lot are just full of monkey-shines, aren’t you?”

Aidan cleared his throat cautiously. Aldrich obviously knew some things, but perhaps not all. “As in . . .

?”

“Oh, don’t get your knickers in a twist, boy. I know plenty about you and your young friend in there.”

Aldrich gestured to the bedchamber door. “I saw you two bring the little one into the club.”

“You did?” Aidan frowned. He’d thought the old fellow nearly blind as well.

“Oh, I can’t see so well with my spectacles, but I do splendidly with my old spyglass. I see everything that happens on St. James!” He leaned closer to Aidan. “Everything.”

Nodding emphatically, Aldrich went on. “I saw the old bird bring the child to the steps and leave her there. I saw you two pick her up. I saw you bring that pretty girl in, too.”

Colin entered the room. He’d obviously been listening in. Aidan saw Melody peeping around the edge of the door. Her big baby blue eyes went wide when she saw Aldrich.

“You saw Nurse Pruitt?” Colin gazed narrowly at the old man. “You saw—?”

“I’ve seen everything,” Aldrich insisted. “I’ve seen things you two lads don’t know a thing about, so shut your disrespectful trap and listen for once in your life.”

Colin opened his mouth to object but Aidan waved him silent. “What don’t we know, Aldrich?”

He told them. He’d seen a fat man in an ugly waistcoat spying on the club.

“That would be Critchley,” Aidan said in an aside to Colin. Aldrich frowned, so Aidan shut his disrespectful trap and let the old fellow carry on.

Aldrich had seen a thin man who watched the fat man. He had watched Madeleine take Melody from the house laughing and he’d watched the fat man follow them to the park. He’d watched the thin man follow them as well—at least to the corner. He’d seen Colin leave the house and he’d seen Aidan leave and come back distracted and worried. He’d seen Madeleine return with Melody at last, looking very frightened indeed.